Last
week Kristjan-Paul Raude, CEO of WSI Online digital agency gave two lectures in
University of Tartu: first an open lecture „How to grow your brand and sales using
digital tools?“ and then an interactive seminar for IdeaLab STARTER program
participants. The topic was suprisingly popular – in the STARTER seminar there
was almost 100 people!

During the seminar Raude
explained the client’s buying behaviour, gave an overview on different
opportunities in digital marketing and shared some practical tips on creating a
digital marketing plan. In more depth he talked about social media channels,
content marketing, creating a strategy and marketing optimization tools. He
also introduced inbound’ marketing: it is a marketing method that helps to
market and sell more customer-friendly, focusing on the customer’s needs and
interests.

„Inbound
marketing is about using marketing to bring potential customers to you, rather
than having your marketing efforts fight for their attention. By creating
content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound
attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for
more. „ – definition by Hubspot.com

As a practical exercise, client
personas for specific companies were created. In the groups participants thought trough the
demographic features of an ideal client, their values and wishes, problems and
needs. In starter program they also learned how to use marketing tools, such as
Google Trends for finding future trends and relevant keywords – as the world is
nowadays changing so fast and long-term marketing strategies are becoming
useless, keeping up with trends is crucial! Teams also did a quick competitor
research, analysing what works for their competitors in terms of marketing.

One of the STARTER program team
leaders Ako said that before workshop he didn’t have high expectations, but he’s
always open for new knowledge and experiences. „What I learned from this
workshop was determining the target group and why’s that important“, adding
that he recommends everyone to participate in IdeaLab seminars – it’s a place
for finding new contacts and learning new things!